Milton W. Humphreys

Milton Wylie Humphreys was born on September 15, 1844, in Greenbrier County, West Virginia, when it was still part of Virginia.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] His father was Andrew Cavet Humphreys and his mother, Mary McQuain (Hefner) Humphreys.[7] He was raised as a Presbyterian.[6] He was educated at the Mercer Academy in Charleston, West Virginia.[1][4] He then attended Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia (then known as Washington College), but he dropped out to join the war efforts.[1][3][4][5][7] Shortly after the war, he taught school.[3][7] He returned to Washington and Lee, and finally received a master's degree in 1869.[3][6] He then received a PhD from the University of Leipzig in Leipzig, Germany.[3][5][6]

During the American Civil War of 1861–1865, he served as a sergeant in the Thirteenth Virginia Light Artillery and Bryan's Battery of the Confederate States Army.[1][2][3][4][8] Most of his combat operations took place in West Virginia.[1] On May 19, 1862, in Fayetteville, West Virginia, he set a precedent for modern warfare by firing an indirect cannon missile.[1][2] He was paroled on June 12, 1865, in Charleston, West Virginia.[1][2] He later became an expert on gunnery and ballistics.[1]

After the war, he returned to Washington and Lee to teach Greek and Latin.[2][3][5] Specifically, he served as associate professor of Latin and Greek from 1867 to 1870, and as adjunct professor of Ancient Languages under General Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) from 1870 to 1875.[7] He insisted upon the Roman pronunciation of Latin, making Washington and Lee the first American university where this was the case.[5][9]

He was then asked by Chancellor Landon Garland (1810-1895) to become the first professor of Greek at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, a newly formed university, which he accepted.[1][5][6] He was officially on the faculty role in 1875.[10] He designed the curriculum, as well as the requirements for admission and graduation.[6] Before he left Vanderbilt, he received the first honorary degree ever given by the university.[6]

From 1883 to 1887, he served as the first professor of Greek and Latin at the University of Texas at Austin in Austin.[1][2][5][7] However, his research during his time in Austin was very much hampered by a lack of books available, as the university had just been established. According to Edwin Mims (1872-1959), who served as chairman of the English Department at Vanderbilt University from 1912 to 1942, Humphreys was sickened to find out that Tadeusz Stefan Zieliński (1859-1944) has already published a volume on research he had been doing for years.[5] As a result, he had no choice but to review Zielinski's book for the American Journal of Philology.[5]

In 1887, he went to teach at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, where he spent the rest of his career.[1][2][5][9][7] He retired on September 12, 1915.[7]

He was the editor of the Revue des Revues from 1878 to 1888 and translated several Greek texts.[3][7] He served as a commissioner to Weltausstellung 1873 Wien, a world fair in Vienna, Austria, in 1873.[1] In 1882, he served as president of the American Philological Association.[1][11] In 1926, he published his Civil War memoirs.[1]

Humphreys's gravestone at the University of Virginia Cemetery in Charlottesville, Virginia

On May 3, 1877, he married Louise Frances Garland, the daughter of Landon Garland (1810-1895), the chancellor of Vanderbilt University, who had recruited him.[6][7] They had four children.[7]

He died on November 20, 1928, in Charlottesville, Virginia.[1][2] He was buried in the University of Virginia Cemetery.[1]

• Autobiography: Typed Excerpts Pertaining to Washington and Lee University (1860).[12]
• Quaestiones metricae de accentus momento in versu heroico (1874, 30 pages).[13]
• On Negative Commands in Greek (1876, 4 pages).[14]
• On Certain Influences of Accent in Latin Iambic Trimeters (1876; 39 pages).[15]
• Elision: Especially in Greek (1878, 14 pages).[16]
• On Certain Effects of Elision (1879).[17]
• On the Nature of Caesura (1879, 7 pages).[18]
• A Contribution to Infantile Linguistic (1880, 13 pages).[19]
• Aristophanes: Butt (1885)
• The Antigone of Sophocles (1891)
• On the Equivalence of Rhythmical Bars and Metrical Feet (1892, 177 pages).[20]
• Demosthenes on the Crown (with introduction and notes, 1913, 306 pages).[21]
• Hephaestion and Irrationality (1915).[22]
• A History of the Lynchburg Campaign (1924, 74 pages).[23]
• Military Operations 1861–1863 at Fayetteville, West Virginia (1926; 1932, 103 pages).[24]
• Anthony, the White Man's Friend: How a Greenbrier Stream and Cave Became Lasting Memorials to a Friendly Indian (1927, 6 pages).[25]
• Influence of Accent in Latin Dactylic Hexameters (22 pages).[26]
• Thucydides and Geometry (4 pages).[27]

• Joseph R. Barrigan, Southern Humanities Review (Volume 10, 1977).[28]